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Article: Land reform, kind of, maybe; Russia; Making Russia's land private.(Europe)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- March 10, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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PRIVATE land-ownership and political freedom usually go together. But not in Russia, where it is the powers-that-be, not the people, who decide about land. It has always been that way. Before communism, there was a bit of public-spiritedness, a lot of capitalism, even the glimmerings of the rule of law. But land? Russia's rulers, whether tsars, Communists or post-Soviet bureaucrats, have never allowed their people fully to exercise the most fundamental of all property rights.
Since the collapse of Soviet power in 1991, private land-ownership has been a classic Russian muddle: it exists in theory, not in practice. The constitution allows it. A presidential decree ...